I was increasingly feeling like I was just arranging words in different configurations, and they made very little sense. I took a few screengrabs from various baby websites and stuck smiling faces all over the deck. That jollied it up somewhat and made it feel a bit more accessible. At around three p.m. it was time for a team meeting. Darren was my team leader – I’d hired him just before going on maternity leave and he was now my line manager. It wasn’t uncommon of course. Having a baby was not a good idea and your career rarely survived – unless when you came back you worked ten times as hard and denied the baby’s existence. It was a thorny issue and one that showed no signs of going away.
‘So, are we all SMASHING it today?’ Darren said as the four of us settled around the table.
There was something about him that gave me a visceral response – a queasy feeling. He was a strange hybrid of ‘macho surfer’ and ‘steely banker’. It was a horrid combination.
‘We are smashing it today,’ I said under my breath but this was far from the truth.
I’d only had one brief in two weeks, and had been finishing up this debrief for three days now (when usually I should have moved onto a new project already). On the table there was a young female intern who seemed about fourteen, then a lovely girl called Sam who had joined Mango-Lab after her gap year in Belize rescuing turtles, and the guy with the TWAT cap who I’d seen around the office, but who had only just been put on Darren’s team. Then me – the Grandma of hip-hop.
‘Let’s each take a turn and say the one thing we’re proud of achieving today.’ Darren said.
Darren had whitened his teeth, and smiled a lot to make sure to get his money’s worth. In my last appraisal, he’d told me to study the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He’d learnt all his ‘tricks and strategies’ from it, he said. I needed to be more like him if I wanted to win in business. The thing was, I wasn’t sure Mango-Lab wanted a forty-two-year-old surfer chick who slapped people on the back without warning … but he was right that I needed to be more enthusiastic – my enthusiasm levels were not great. He also told me that my business-winning target had tripled. He delivered this news with a grin, and then slapped the table to signal our one-on-one had finished.
‘Great dude! Do you want to high five?’
I just glared at him. I clearly didn’t want to do that at all. It had taken me forty minutes to fill in one line on the review form which was all in Excel – I found it impossible to use at the best of times. I had the sense that Darren was trying to catch me out and make my life as difficult as possible. I didn’t like the cut of his jib. Even by Mango-Lab’s standards he was a viper. If I’d been Phoebe, I would have taken his advice on the chin and manned up. Instead I went into the toilet and cried, and then went to Pret and bought myself a cheese and ham croissant. I rang Mum and vowed to escape this terrible job as soon as possible. I understood we needed to bring business in but they needed to be practical about just how much a part-time mum could bring in on her own with little support.
‘You’ll never achieve this huge figure Rebecca,’ Darren had said in one of our more recent catch-ups. ‘You won’t even come close but let’s set the bar REAL high? Let’s see where that tide takes you.’
He’d grinned, flashing those ghastly gnashers. He delivered bad news whilst smiling like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining. This might have come from his self-help book but it didn’t work for me. Many were terrified of him.
‘I worked until three a.m. on a debrief last night.’
‘I typed the whole thing whilst cycling on my bicycle.’
‘My Fitbit says I got one hour of sleep but I just had a twenty-minute cat nap so my metabolism is back on form.’
‘I missed my daughter’s birthday because I was winning this new project from Ribena and so she didn’t mind.’
‘I’ve worked out that if I nap for ten minutes at three p.m. I can keep working till ten and feel fine.’
These were typical Darren statements. People who are workaholics smell bad. This was something I’d noticed about him from day one. His body was slowly decomposing as he became a man/robot hybrid. When he sweated it smelt like someone had died. The human elements were rapidly being broken down. He often appeared from nowhere and was suddenly right behind you like he was floating around. His legs replaced by wheels because legs were useless and didn’t transport you from one laptop to the next in quick enough time. Meanwhile in that same appraisal meeting, Phoebe had sat in the corner and taken notes the whole time he was speaking – ‘This loser will probably last no more than six months,’ or something close. Maybe she drew penises in the margins too. And I tried to do these things – to be more enthusiastic, more dynamic, but it felt as if I was sinking.
They knew this of course and I felt like this was part of the plan.
We were back in the meeting. Darren was using the corner of a piece of paper to pick something out of his teeth.
‘I’m proud that I took good notes during the banking groups and learnt some super interesting insights about people and their favourite financial services apps,’ the intern said cheerily.
She was very pretty but would soon be very tired. I often witnessed their pink, healthy cheeks become hangdog and pale as the long hours drained the life force from them.
‘Great work,’ Darren said tapping his pen noisily on the table. ‘Banking is one of my favourite categories. Well done Sasha.’
‘It’s not Sasha,’ she replied.
‘Whatever … next dude!’
‘I’m proud that I’ve identified a new paradigm shift in the pet food market,’ said the TWAT.
I drew a little penis in the margin.
‘I’m constantly surprised by the pet food category,’ Darren said. ‘Such rich behavioural data when you compare dry versus wet. There’s definitely a breakfast innovation session in there somewhere if you’d be interested in writing it.’
TWAT nodded and then glanced at my pad. I worried that perhaps he’d noticed my penis drawing, so I quickly drew some branches coming out of the bell-end so it looked more like a blossoming tree.
‘And what are YOU proud of this week, Rebecca?’ Darren asked.
I could always sense sarcasm in his voice. I had violent fantasies which ended with me punching him in the face. I knew these feelings were irrational, but Darren had come to represent my failure and lack of popularity. I stared back at him, and thought about how I’d need to bandage up my hands properly to get a good punch in. How I’d never punched anyone before but this first punch would be very powerful. How his teeth would shatter one by one, like in a cartoon, and then fall to the floor. How I would perhaps pick these teeth up and keep them as mementos. How I would leave the office with them in my pocket and then make a bestselling rap album where I dissed Darren in every song. Then I stopped and felt a wave of panic. It wasn’t Darren’s fault that I was becoming less relevant. Or that I only had two clients commissioning business. Or that I didn’t share his boundless enthusiasm for dog kibble.
‘I
